


Persona: Foxhunt

by Reach (Cite), Supnitle, Yesserson



Category: Persona Series
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Expanded Universe, Explicit Language, Gen, High School, Inspired by Roleplay/Roleplay Adaptation, Original Character-centric, it's another story in the persona universe starring another group of persona users
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 01:15:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16357832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cite/pseuds/Reach, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supnitle/pseuds/Supnitle, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yesserson/pseuds/Yesserson
Summary: Six high schoolers move to the downtrodden city of Tsukiwara to attend the prestigious Yosai Academy. With the assistance of a power they didn't know they carried - a "Persona" - they band together to fight back against the monsters plaguing the city.A collaborative story, adapted from an ongoing play-by-post roleplay.





	1. A Brief Overview of What Foxhunt Is

Foxhunt is an original story taking place in the Persona universe (that is, the same world as Persona 3, 4, and 5, which may or may not also be in continuity with Persona 1 and 2). It's an adaptation of a roleplaying forum I run alongside several friends. The writers, and the characters they play, consist of:

  * Reach - Game Master, most NPCs
  * asano_man - Kensuke Saito
  * [Yes ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yesserson)\- Akane Sakamoto
  * NonSequitur - Hisano Fujioka
  * Smiles - Zarat Indamar
  * Bitterfruit - Masaru Hayakawa
  * [Supnitle ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Supnitle)\- Kaoru Kitayama



I, Reach, do most of the editing to translate the writing from forum posts to a hopefully-more-palatable prose format. While I may edit grammar, tenses, and sentence placement to make things more consistent with better continuity, I will rarely, if ever, edit the actual contents of the writing itself.

If you would like to read posts unabridged, to view them before I get around to editing and uploading them here, or to check supplemental materials (like character sheets or info on town landmarks), you can view the Foxhunt forum **[here](https://foxhunt.jcink.net/index.php)**. Pardon the dust - we recently needed to move sites and I haven't gotten to fixing the look.


	2. Endtroducing.....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains contributions from: Reach, NonSequitur, asano_man, Bitterfruit, Supnitle, Smiles, and Yes

Six pairs of eyes adjusted as they came to, the fuzzy, unfamiliar room slowly fading into focus. It was dark, illuminated by the bright crackle of a warm fireplace on the opposite side from where everyone was sitting - each in a plain wooden chair, not terribly comfortable. As more and more of the room became visible, details could be made out. It was some sort of lodge; brown wood panelling and stone made up the walls, which angled upward until they met at the roof. There was a wooden case off to the side. Inside, the steel gling of a firearm rack could barely be seen. Massive blue curtains covered both sides of the lodge, presumably covering windows, though there was no way to be certain. Everything here was blue - the plush carpeting, the couches pushed off to the walls, even the mysterious lighting that seemed to be coming from nowhere painted the room in a deep, dark blue.

There were two other people facing the six, on the opposite side of the room. Slightly closer was a pale-skinned woman in a jacket - blue, of course - with four brass buttons, white breeches, and a pair of laceless black boots. A brimmed black hunting helmet topped her short silver hair, and golden eyes gazed with a wry smile on her lips. She held a large brown tome.

Just to her right was a plain wooden desk. At it sat - in a matching blue chair - a mostly-bald man, his eyes shut, head cocked downward, white gloved hands folded on the table, wearing a black suit. That alone would have been a strange enough sight if not for the man’s shockingly-long nose.

It was some time before his head craned upward. His eyes opened into a ghastly visage - they were bloodshot, looking almost as if they were bulging out of the socket. An impish grin - the whole man looked rather impish, really - suddenly lit his face, and he spoke, an altogether surprisingly-pleasant tone, considering his appearance:

“Welcome to the Velvet Room.”

Disturbingly, his grin didn’t even falter as he talked, and his lips barely moved. Yet his words came out clear as day.

“My, my. And it’s been years since our last guest.” He propped his elbows on the table, and rested his chin on his folded-together palms. “My name is Igor. I am delighted to make your acquaintance.” Igor shifted his left palm slightly, indicating the woman standing to the side. “And this is Agatha.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” she chimed in sweetly.

“This place exists between dream and reality. Mind, and matter. Agatha and I are both residents of this room. And henceforth, it would seem you are as well.” Igor gazed from left to right. “All… six of you.”

All six. Not a one of them could see the other five, but all six were there.

“You are soon to embark upon a great journey, and you will require mine and Agatha’s assistance to see it through to its very end. Normally, only those who are bound by a contract may enter this room, but it would seem there have been some unusual circumstances.”

There was the briefest of pauses. “You six may not yet know each other, but I am certain you will all convene in the coming days. Your fates are tied together, and it’s your duty to see this journey through to its very end. But the details can wait for another time. We will meet again soon.”

Their vision grew hazy again.

  


\---

 

  
Sunday, 4/6, afternoon.

“…the fuck're you talking about?”

She awoke with a start as the train jerked to a stop into the station. She must have dozed off on the ride from her aunt's all the way in the boonies back into town. She was wearing what she wore in the dream, the new uniform of her school from that day on. At her side was a roll-along case with most of her essentials and her school bag.

 _Too vivid._   
  
Hisano had a really uneasy feeling in that place. All blue and done up like that. Even before she got a load of the silver-haired girl in blue or long nose, the atmosphere alone was enough to make her skin crawl. It didn't feel like a dream, it was surreal like a dream but…   
  
Too many details stood out to her, the sensation of the wood she was sitting on, the way the chair arched into her back that made it feel godawful and pinch her just under her shoulder blades. How this blue light was kind of hurting her eyes until she adjusted to it. All the little things she never bothered to recall in her own dreams.   
  
She wasn't really much for pleasantries, but it was hard not to have the names of these faces burned in at that point. She had stared back dumbfounded at them as silver-hair and long-nose were introduced as Agatha and Igor respectively. That much she grasped without problems.   
  
Sure, the Velvet Room. Whatever. She had looked around and done a double take when he mentioned 'six of you' - as far as she knew, it was just she and these two in the worst mixer ever.

No, it wasn't going to get explained, of course not! It was just one of those days!  


The PA was announcing the current station and people were filing out, and she got to her feet and followed suit. Head down, eyes forward, dark-painted lips curled into a frown and a head full of thoughts. That was… not just a dream was it?  
  
She like, astrally projected or got contacted by Centaurians or something. It had to be! No dream she'd ever had was something she could have recalled so acutely as she did that one! She put her head down and left the station behind.   
  
Her first look at Tsukiwara in years.   
  
Hisano turned her head up and scanned over the skyline, before sneering with obvious disgust. By god. This city was an even bigger shithole than she remembered it.   
  
Well, whatever, she threw her school bag over one shoulder and dragged along her carry-on. The sooner she got to the dorms, the less of it she had to see, right? She got a move on.

  


\---

  


Kensule awoke to a ringing sound. He blinked the sleep from his eyes and looked around. He was in the back seat of a car. Right. He was moving today. And that ringing sound...?  
  
From his pocket. His cell phone. He fished it out and stared at the screen for a second before flipping it open and answering. “Hello, Mother.”   
  
“Kensuke. How's the ride down been?”   


“Uneventful. Pretty boring. I actually must have nodded off. You woke me up just now.”  


“So you're not at your dorm yet?”  


Kensuke glanced out the window, out at the rows of unwashed gray buildings, few with actual businesses in them. “Not yet. But it looks like we're in Tsukiwara.”  


“That's good. Well, give me a call when you get situated in your dorm, let me know you're safe.”  


“Of course.”  


“Your father is still busy with that bill. He's hoping to have a version to present by the end of the day. I'll have him call you when he gets some time.”  


“I understand.”  


“I hope this new school treats you well. I'll try to make time to come visit you in a week or two.”  


“Alright.”  


“I need to go now. Love you, son. Talk to you soon.”  


“Love you, too.”

Kensuke closed his phone and replaced it in his pocket with a sigh. After that strange dream of his, that call almost seemed too mundane. But it had just been a dream, he supposed. Regardless of how real it had felt.

That place wasn't natural. All of his senses had told him it was real, but there were small details that were too off. A rack covered in guns in Japan. A fire, cackling and spitting, bathing the room in a blue light. And then the other two people he could see: a troll-like man and a woman with golden eyes.  
  
He had listened with apprehension as the man named Igor told him about the Velvet Room. Nothing he said made sense. Five others? Contract? Great journey? It was dream talk. It had the semblance of structure without any real meaning. Kensuke had been too overwhelmed with the situation to respond.

After several more minutes, the car slowed to a halt in front of a building. “Sir?”, the driver called, looking at Kensuke through the rear view mirror. “We're here.” Kensuke exited the car and helped the driver pull his luggage out of the trunk. Most of his stuff had been delivered weeks prior, so he only had two bags to worry about. With that finished, the driver drove off, leaving Kensuke in front of the Kokei dormitories.  
  
The building was immaculate, a stark contrast to every other building in sight. Everything around him was dirty and gray. The air smelled of smog and felt grimy. He sighed deeply. This was depressing. He wondered how far out the city limits were, and how far the nearest forest was beyond that. This was apparently a harbor town, but Kensuke wasn't really excited about that; a town as industrious as this had no doubt polluted its waters for decades to come. He didn't even want to think about how uncared for the park must be, if there was even a park.   
  
Two years. It was shorter than he realized - or at least that's what he had to keep telling himself. With another sigh, he lifted his luggage and entered the building.

  


\---

  


"Young master."  
  
No response.   
  
"Young master."   
  
Silence again.   
  
"Young master!"   
  
Masaru awoke with a jolt. "What...?" He was in a car. But just moments before, he was in some sort of lodge… oh. Right. He was moving today. Tsukiwara. He must have dozed off. But does that mean…?   
  
The woman driving the car breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank goodness, you're awake now. I was worried I would have to wake you up myself. We're almost at the dorms."   
  
Right. The dorms. He'd be arriving soon. To live out the rest of his high school days without the supervision of his father. That was good, wasn't it? A brief respite from the excessive demands of his father was always good, even if it was only meant to be a punishment. But Masaru knew it wouldn't last forever.

The dream was… odd. It was odd enough for Masaru to dream, but it has felt far too lifelike to be a simple dream. Lucid dream? Maybe. Probably not, though. It only became stranger as Masaru's vision became clearer; the blue lighting seemingly coming from nowhere, the blue… everything, and the room's only other denizens, who Masaru couldn't even imagine, let alone remember meeting. Not even the name of the room made much sense to him.  
  
The long nosed man had went on, only confusing Masaru further. Six? Masaru had glanced around the room, certain that he was the only other person there besides the man known as Igor and the woman known as Agatha. Masaru didn't say anything, only attempting to stare a hole into Igor as a response. To his credit, he hadn't seemed particularly perturbed by it.

Masaru quickly stretched himself, gently pushing some stray strands of his dark red hair out of his face, and looked out the window to see the city he would be calling home for the foreseeable future. It looked like death. Crumbling infrastructure, crumbling buildings, and what looked like a crumbling sky. Exactly what the Internet told him. Another apparent victim of the bubble bursting, whether it was direct or not. Except Tsukiwara was never able to recover. All that's left was...  
  
The car came to a stop. "We've arrived." Masaru turned his gaze towards the building they had stopped at. Speak of the devil. All that was left in this town was the school, and the dorms sure seemed to prove it.   
  
Masaru flipped the hood of his dark grey hoodie off his head, as the driver quickly opened his door. After a few moments of getting his luggage (one bag, as most of what his father had allowed him to bring had already arrived some time before), Masaru bid the servant farewell as she drove off, leaving him standing in front of the dorm with his luggage. Wanting to get unpacking over with as soon as possible, Masaru took his luggage, and entered the building.

  


\---

  


When Kaoru came to, she was standing up. She was leaning against the wall of a convenience store in Tsukiwara's 'shopping district,' a plate containing a pre-made meal in her hands and her bike resting on the curb in front of her. She blinked the haze out of her eyes, regaining herself. Had... had she dozed off while eating…? Standing up? And also holding a plate, apparently. Or, maybe she'd just spaced out for a moment and... had a dream? She shook her head. Didn't make much sense. Probably just stress from all the movement in her life, lately. Getting kicked out of the orphanage and moving to an even shittier town to go to a fancy school was a big change.

The verisimilitude of the dream was unnerving. All of it had felt real: the blue lighting, the uncomfortable chair, the long-nosed man and his blue-clothed assistant. At first, Kaoru didn't even realize that she was asleep. When Igor opened his bloodshot eyes, his mouth moving in impossible ways as he spoke, it took Kaoru only a moment to recognize that this was likely a dream - an especially lucid dream, but a dream nonetheless. She had sat quietly, taking in her surroundings; she'd never been anywhere that even resembled the lodge, and she certainly didn't recognize either Igor or Agatha.

Kaoru had heard once that all the people in your dreams were people borrowed from your memories. The idea that Kaoru knew either of the two in front of her, but did not remember them, was more than a little disconcerting.

She had said nothing, just sitting and listening, assuming that none if it was really happening. Igor mentioned five others, which brought Kaoru a moment of pause. She was the only one there in the lodge, other than Igor and Agatha. Was her brain trying to tell her something? Was it referring to some of the children back at the orphanage? As she thought, Kaoru felt an ache in her feet and a weight in her hands. She was being summoned back to reality, presumably, and Igor claimed they would 'meet again.'

Kaoru had made a face just before she left. "Can we not?"

Now, Kaoru glanced down at the plate, then picked up a slab of produced-meat-product and shoved it in her mouth, tossing the rest of the plate into a nearby garbage can. Stepping forward off of the wall, she looked around for a moment, relatively unperturbed by the run-down town around her. Nothing new, really. Kaoru hadn't taken the time to explore Tsukiwara quite yet, but it really couldn't be any worse than the orphanage.

She plopped herself down on her Suzuki T20, strapping her helmet on once she was secured. It was getting dark. She wiped her gloves off on her pants, pulled her phone out of her pocket, and checked the time. She was supposed to be at the dorms by now. Whoops. Starting up the gas, Kaoru pulled off of the curb and gunned it, flying down the road and leaving tracks in her wake.

  


\---

  


Zarat blinked, momentarily blinded by the sudden assault of sunlight. It wasn't as if she had just noticed the sun was there, but as if she had woken up from some sort of... sudden dream. _That... couldn't have actually happened, could it?_ , the young woman thought worriedly. _Who was that..._ where _was that, for that matter? Even if only a dream it felt all... too real._ She spared herself a few seconds to mull it over, but the sights and sounds of the crowds around her quickly brought Zarat back to reality.

That's right, she wasn't just having herself an afternoon stroll. Quite the opposite. Today she found herself in a completely new city, in a completely different country for that matter.

Tsukiwara, Japan. A city she had no real knowledge of until a few months prior, but was now one that she would be calling home for the time being. Her desire for a quality education brought her here, but if her bizarre 'dream' was any sort of first impression, she didn't have the best of starts.

For a dream, it would have possibly been more accurate to be called a nightmare. An unfamiliar place, no knowledge of how she got there at all and that... terrifying man grinning at her. Even if it was just a 'dream', Zarat knew that she could feel her heart beating in her chest like a drum. Igor. Agatha. Names she had no context for through her anxiety, even as the man tried to explain her being there. Six of them? Others around her that were also strangers?

Igor managed to promise the girl that they would be meeting again shortly, but she had dared not meet his gaze to try and voice an opinion to the contrary.

Sighing, Zarat pushed her glasses back up onto her nose and took out the map she had procured from the airport.

"Yosai Academy…. Ah, there we are." She quickly found the area she'd have to become very familiar with on the map, and traced a path with her finger to where she stood now. "That's not too long of a walk. And with a decent enough pace I can reach it before it's even dark. Yeah, I can do this!" Zarat adjusted her headscarf and set off, resigned to not let a disturbing dream put a halt to her future.

  


\---

  


"-yes on the road, young mistress! Eyes on the road, damnit! _Oi!_ "

Akane jolted to attention as she felt another hand on the wheel. She had drifted off to the right side of the road, headlong towards a mailbox. Shinsuke sat to her right in the passenger's seat, eyes open, vein bulging, face red, half terror and half rage, hand supporting the wheel and helping her veer away from imminent property destruction. She brought the car back to the left and parked at the side of the road, shaking the blue tint from her sight. Luckily for her it was a sleepy residential street and no one was around to kick up a fuss. The bald man to her right slumped against the seat of the Cadillac, heaving a shaking sigh. After a beat, he sat up and yelled at her again.

"Are you _insane?_ Do you know how much trouble you'd cause if they caught you in a crash like that without a license?"

Akane grinned, smiling with easy bravado. "That's why you're here. A yakuza's always ready to give his life for the boss, right?"

Shinsuke rested his head in his palms, shaking his head. "I should have just dropped you off straight at the dorm. Letting you drive was a mistake."

He really shouldn't have. The black 1986 Fleetwood Brougham D'elegance was one of dad's favorites. The design had a lot of character, it was an expensive foreign car, and he got it on the cheap from a fellow auto enthusiast who was selling off part of his collection to buy property. It was Akane's favorite too; Father had souped the car up and added all sorts of fun features to the luxury car, and even its name was needlessly luxurious. Even if her father loved her, Akane was sure that totaling the car would be tantamount to excommunication for Shinsuke and her both.

"Sorry, I was just trying to have a little fun and had a little daydream. It won't happen happen again."

Shinsuke frowned at her and opened his door. "If you're dozing off, that's more reason you shouldn't be driving illegally. Get in the passenger's side. I'm driving the rest of the way."

But she wasn't drowsy. Akane bit back the comment and shrugged, giving him a defeated smile. "Sure, fine. Dad doesn't get to hear about our little adventure, right?"

"I'll give you a pass this time. But the next time you act up it's going straight to him."

"The others were right. You really are a pushover."

"...Do you want me to rat you out?"

Akane laughed as she clicked the seatbelt, but her mind was elsewhere, dwelling on the dream she received. Igor and Agatha were startling, but the crackle of the flame, the heavy tome, the haunting, beautiful song all left a deeper impression on her. The riddles put lead in her stomach, but there wasn't much reason to mull on a dream. Still, she couldn't put the dream behind her completely. The touch of the chair's wood grain lingered on her fingers. 


End file.
